A labeling system is used for attaching cylindrical labels, such as stretch labels or shrink labels, to the outer body surfaces of various bottles. Such a labeling system is provided with a label supplying device designed to make cuts consecutively in a label base material in the form of an elongated folded sheet to provide closely arranged cylindrical labels. Through the cutting, the label base material is formed into cylindrical labels each having a predetermined length. These cylindrical labels of the predetermined length are forwarded by the label supplying device to the following label attaching device.
As shown in FIG. 18, the label supplying device includes a delivery roller 101 for delivering a label base material M in the form of an elongated folded sheet, a cutting unit 102 for cutting the label base material M delivered by the delivery roller 101 into a predetermined length to form individual cylindrical labels L, and a belt transfer unit 103 for transferring the cylindrical labels L of the predetermined length to a label supply position α. The belt transfer unit 103 transfers the labels L, which are formed by the cutting operation and have a predetermined length, to the label supply position α. For this transfer, the labels L are sucked onto a pair of feed belts 103a, 103a arranged parallel to each other with a predetermined space between them.
As noted above, the long strip-like label base material M is cut into cylindrical labels L. Unfavorably, in each resulting label L, the cut edges at an end falsely stick together. As a result, in opening the folded sheet of the cylindrical label L, the label fails to open properly, and hence, fails to be attached to a bottle smoothly and reliably. To avoid this problem, the label supplying device 100 of this kind includes a label edge separation unit 104 for separating the overlapping edges of the folded sheet of the cylindrical label L during the transferring of the cylindrical label L by the belt transfer unit 103.
As illustrated in the figure, the label edge separation unit 104 is arranged to face the feed belts 103a, 103a across the transfer line of the cylindrical label L, and includes three guide rollers 104a, a driving pulley 104b, and belts 104c, 104c wound around these rollers and pulley. The driving pulley 104b is driven by a servomotor operable independently from the servomotor for circulating the feed belts 103a, 103a. 
The rotation speed of the driving pulley 104b is set so that the belts 104c, 104c circulate at a higher speed than that of the feed belts 103a, 103a. The overlapping edges of the cylindrical label L, sandwiched between the belts 104c, 104c and the feed belts 103a, 103a, will be separated from each other due to the difference in speed between the movement of the belts 104c, 104c and that of the feed belts 103a, 103a. 